Technical cooperation is one of the ILO's main expenditure items. How is its recent evolution viewed by the Workers' Group?

We find it regrettable that the means placed at the ILO's disposal are shrinking year by year, to the point where its regular budget can no longer satisfy the demand for technical cooperation. So the ILO is obliged to turn to donors. But donors have their own requirements. Generally, they specify which fields or countries they want to be involved in and they choose the target group - workers, employers or governments. The fact that the ILO has found additional resources through these donors is a good thing, but it doesn't always provide the ILO with the means to put its own policies into effect. The donors should be putting funds into the ILO's regular budget. For instance, we note that the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), with which all the governments are somewhat infatuated, now makes up the bulk of the technical cooperation, to such an extent that action to promote respect for the fundamental standards is relegated virtually to last position, even though it underlies the rest of the activities. We wish governments to take as much interest in the Conventions on trade union freedom and collective bargaining as in Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labour.

What are the main technical cooperation needs of unions in the countries of the South?

We react to topical issues. One of these is the need to reduce poverty, and in this context, moves are afoot these days to relieve developing countries of part of their debts. There are conditions attached to this relief. In particular, the beneficiary countries have to draw up Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). The social partners are involved in the process of elaborating these. So the need is to strengthen the unions' capacity to take part in this discussion in the most effective way possible. Another priority for the trade unions is employment. In the developing countries, the informal economy is burgeoning, and only a few per cent of the population have social security coverage. Employment policy is a field in which the trade unions in the South want maximum assistance from ILO technical cooperation.

Unions in the South need educators on economic issues, for instance.

Yes, amongst other things. The needs are at different levels - unions must have a good level of expertise available to them in order to be good social partners, but they also have to train the rank-and-file, so as to ensure the next batch of experts.

It might be expected that union activists, once trained, will leave in order to earn more in the private sector.

We can't stop people from developing, but a means must be found of ensuring that they continue to serve the trade union movement. Unions live from their dues and don't generally have the means to retain experts, but if we can keep them within our orbit, we can call upon them from time to time. Often, in the countries of the South, the unions don't employ many staffers. They rely more on activists who have a job in one field or another and who do trade unionism on the side. We must support them in these efforts, particularly by negotiating with their employers so that they don't hassle them too much.

Alongside the unions, NGOs are occupying a bigger and bigger space within civil society, particularly in the informal economy. Is this a good thing for the workers?

In Benin, my confederation was one of the first to take an interest in the informal economy, and we did some good work there. We don't systematically wage war against the NGOs. We accept them, as long as they're credible. The problem these days is that the world of the NGOs is a maze, a ragbag, whereas for trade unions, there are criteria for judging the worth of one organization or another, notably as concerns representativity and internal democracy. With all these NGOs around, it's difficult to know who's who, but we have no problem about taking action together with the ones that make themselves felt, the ones that we see acting in the field.

Do you agree that the NGOs should benefit from the ILO's trade union cooperation?

Increasingly, the NGOs benefit more from the technical cooperation than the unions do. This is particularly the case within the programme for the elimination of child labour (IPEC). As a social partner and an ILO constituent, we want to be treated better. In the informal economy, for example, the trade unions have a long-term policy. They are working to ensure that, ultimately, those concerned can take better care of themselves. The NGOs' action is more ad hoc, to satisfy immediate needs. We can work with them but at present, we don't have one-twentieth of the total means provided to the NGOs.

What is behind this infatuation with the NGOs?

The decision-makers think that unions spell trouble, so they prefer to go where there are fewer difficulties, where critical faculties are less well-developed.

Do the main policy directions followed by the ILO recently meet the unions' wishes, notably as regards technical cooperation?

We deplore the trend away from taking account of the unions' concerns but also of the employers' concerns. This is reflected, for example, in the activities for the social partners conducted by the ILO's International Training Centre in Turin. In 2000, they accounted for just 13 per cent of its total activities. This went up to 17 per cent in 2001, but it's still below our expectations. In each of the ILO's strategic fields, we want a certain visibility for the workers' and employers' activities. The «integrated approach», which is talked about so much at the ILO, should make it possible to take account of the social partners' concerns, but this is not always the case.